


so long as we keep this lowkey

by yourendlessblue



Series: keep your helmet, keep your life on [2]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Doctors AU, F/M, Fluff, Getting Together, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, apparently i've been on a roll with those, but riza hawkeye pining is a VERY fun concept, doctors in this pandemic au, for once it's riza being a total dumbass, i lied they're both dumbasses, idiots to lovers, they're throwing havoc under the bus because they need to blame someone for their pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:02:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26853394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourendlessblue/pseuds/yourendlessblue
Summary: And with that, the traitorous bread dislodged itself to her pharynx.She erupts into a fit of choking coughs and Roy raises abruptly, sending her cheap dining chair sliding backwards as he leans across her small table. “Shit, Riza, chew slowly, are you okay?!”Riza glares at him after she finishes hacking her lungs out. What the—what—? “If you try to Heimlich me I will kill you,” she hoarsely breathes as she reaches for her drink.“That hardly seems like equivalent exchange for potentially saving your life,” Roy says dryly, sitting back though maintaining a cautious eye on her. Riza feels everything, more so her face, burns. “You’re violent tonight.”
Relationships: Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Series: keep your helmet, keep your life on [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1958929
Comments: 4
Kudos: 51





	so long as we keep this lowkey

**Author's Note:**

> KEY TAG BEING: idiots to lovers.
> 
> everyone, always be careful <3
> 
> no need to read the first one, both 2 chapters are just them being dumb and me throwing them in dumb scenarios lol

She’s tired. So, so, tired, but really, what else can she do.

“You again, Hawkeye?”

She feels her heart jump to her throat but Riza stays still—she doesn’t need to turn, she knows who that is, knows that voice anywhere. There’s a _very_ specific way that she thinks Roy calls her, an intonation to her last name that only he uses. His voice goes slightly lower on the first syllable and rises as he says _eye,_ lightly teasing, like calling her name out is always an amusing thing. Probably it is somewhat _fun_ to him, all those years having to say _Professor Hawkeye_ and _Sir_ instead.

He could do with _Riza_ , damn it. They’ve been friends for, what, almost five years and known each other for almost _eleven._ You’d think they’d be on a first name basis.

“Tired to see me?” She deadpans, keeping her eyes on the monitor.

“Never,” Roy says. She can see his grin even without seeing it. She misses seeing his grin. These damn masks. “In fact, I wish I can see you everyday.”

Nurse Harris chuckles from her left. Riza sighs, and finally turns to him. His blue scrubs, _god_. Sometimes she wonders if she likes being humiliated. “Then camp your ass here in the ICU. There’s never a shortage of work. You’ll be useful.”

“She’s right, Doctor Mustang, you can help out changing the foleys.”

Riza snorts as Roy scoffs a laugh. “I’ll leave that to the urologists, thanks.” He pulls the chair from behind her and plops down on it and Riza shoots him a look; _really, chair pulling?_ He looks up at her innocently. “Really, though, Hawkeye, haven’t you been on the ICU shift every other day this week? On top of the surgeries? Weren’t you last night’s anesthesiologist for the emergency C-section with Dr. Rockbell?”

As a matter of fact, she last went home two days ago. “Yeah,” she massages her temple, and Roy pulls another chair for her to sit onto without moving from his place. Riza lowers herself. “Miles’ PCR came back positive, so I have to cover for him.”

“ _Shit_ ,” Roy says, “is he okay?”

“He is, thankfully,” she says, closing her eyes. She wants to nap right here, right now. “But he’s one of our two only intensivists, remember.”

“That’s why I told you to become one,” a familiar voice says. Riza twirls her chair and comes face-to-face with an equally tired and paling Izumi Curtis, head of their ICU and the anesthesiology department, dark circles under her eyes prominent as ever. “Thanks for covering, Doctor Hawkeye.”

Roy pulls her office chair to turn back towards him, and Riza yelps at the sudden movement, almost tipping over. She kicks him in the shin, but he dodges, only looking at her with surprise in his eyes. “You’re already going in for fellowship?”

“You two act like children,” Izumi muses lightly. “It’s adorable. Anyways, go home, Riza, it’s six PM, take a day off tomorrow, it’s Neil’s duty.”

“You mean _he_ acts like a child,” Riza protests petulantly, and Izumi rolls her eyes at her decidedly _childish_ response. “But yeah, well, I’m contemplating on taking the fellowship next semester. I hope the pandemic’s already slowed down then.”

“I doubt it, honestly, but at the somewhat bright side, you can learn lots in the ICU. On the dark side, not going to be enough variety.”

“You’ve decided, then? Intensive care it is?” Roy presses again, and Riza frowns slightly at him.

“I—“

“Oh no,” he groans—whines, like a disappointed child, “if you become an intensivist you’re going to be so busy and you won’t spend as much time in the OT! And here I am wishing you’ll always be the anesthesiologist in my surgeries.”

Nurse Harris whips his head to them in surprise, and Riza stares at him, wide-eyed, Izumi with an amused look in hers. For a couple of seconds that feels like a lifetime the sound that pierces the air is only the sounds of the monitors going off in its regular, almost melodic cadence. He looks oblivious as ever, but Riza suddenly feels so very awake.

Izumi laughs, then, a loud chortle that startles her and seemingly brings Roy back to earth. Her whole face feels like on fire, _what the fuck, Roy—_ “Mustang, is that a _proposal_?”

“Wh—no!” Roy’s ears are red. Riza blinks, still at a loss for words. They are friendly with each other, known each other since she was still in medical school and he was in his early residency, following her father everywhere, and perhaps she has always harboured some sort of a crush on him, but they’ve always managed to skirt around the line of something more than friendship and colleague-ship. And of course this is _hardly_ a romantic outburst, but, _but._ “I’m just saying, Doctor Hawkeye’s, um, she’s Professor Hawkeye’s daughter, I’d always thought even if she wasn’t in cardio she’d always be—“

“Save it, save it,” Izumi says, still laughing, and Nurse Harris has joined her, “deal with it on your owns. Off you go, both of you, before someone gets a heart attack. Hawkeye, go eat and go home.”

She obliges, still somewhat dazed, and lets Roy fall into step with her in flustered silence. It’s getting to be a bit unbearable, so a little ways from the ICU she opens her mouth to ask him something trivial—

“What were you—“

“Hawkeye, are you—“

She clears her throat. “Me first,” she says with a pointed look, because they’re blubbering enough already. What _the hell_. They’re both well over thirty. Roy shrugs, and Riza imagines he’s grinning a little shyly. “What were you doing in the ICU anyways?”

“Oh, that,” he rubs the back of his neck, “just, uh, just following up on the lung transplant candidate.”

“Right, it’s this Saturday?”

“Yeah. Keep him alive till then, would you?”

Riza gives him a withering look. “We’ll try,” she dryly says. “Fine, your turn.”

She absently realises he’s followed her to the anesthesiology department instead of the surgery department all the way a floor above at the opposite wing, but Roy seems to not be bothered. Instead, he takes a seat on _her_ office chair as she collects some of her things to her bag. “You want to get dinner together?”

“Sure,” she answers, affecting a careful nonchalance. “You pick where we’re getting the takeout from. I’m too tired to drive now anyways.”

“I’ll drive you home,” he says, “I’m also off tomorrow. I’ll get your car then.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I can’t impose.”

“Exactly, Hawkeye, you _cannot_ impose on me, you know. I’d be glad to do a lot of things for you,” he says, still obliviously nonchalant, and Riza’s heart stops.

Izumi was right. Better get the hell out as fast as she can lest she actually gets a heart attack. Well. At least she’ll have a good chance of surviving the ordeal if he’s there, even if he’s the reason for her heart attack in the first place.

“Okay,” she unsurely says, “thanks, Mustang, I owe you one.” He’s dropped her off at her place only once before—not her family home, which address he’s probably remembered by muscle memory from all those years slaving under her father, but her apartment, that she moved out to only two years prior after her father passed away. Riza distantly remembers it was after Havoc’s birthday party last year, and she was a wasted mess, courtesy of _who else_ if not Rebecca. Havoc (the asshole) had very, very unsubtly said _Mustang, you should take her home—I mean, drive her home, don’t be a bastard—isn’t your place in the same direction?_ She was probably too drunk to be embarrassed and Roy had graciously agreed.

Suddenly she feels sullen. She’s not one for partying every weekend, but she _does_ miss going out and spending time with her friends to let off steam and escape from the hustle and bustle of the hospital every once in a while.

“You know—“ he stops, then, focusing on twirling her pen that he’s stolen off her desk in her fingers, “—nevermind. By the way, have you gotten tested? Did you have contact with Miles?”

Riza snorts. “Having second thoughts on sharing a car and eating with me? All three of us in the department are negative but Miles.”

“No, Hawkeye, I’m just worried,” he says softly, “I don’t want you to run yourself ragged. Your health should come first.”

Riza leans back on her desk and crosses her arms, tilting her head to the side; she tries _very hard_ to look casual and nonchalant, as if her heart isn’t fucking _fibrillating_ right now. “Worried about me?”

They’ve been doing this for months, now: somewhat aimless flirting, and Riza remembers that one stupid lapse last week in the PPE room that they (unfortunately) didn’t get to follow up because the patient had went to shock on the table and all flirting and romance went absolutely _out_ of the window afterwards. But lately he’s been a little too dangerously sincere, too close, too sweet, and it’s a bit—unlike him, honestly.

It makes her a _mess_.

“Always,” Roy says, again with a tone that’s a touch too soft and genuine for her to reply with a snarky, friendly, casual, platonic, _normal_ comment. “Come on, let’s get you home.”

+

Riza ends up inviting him to her place.

She fell asleep not five minutes after he started his drive, and she only woke up when he gently nudged her arm—by then they’re already at her apartment’s parking lot. He also got them food already, from a drive-thru of her favourite Cretan sandwich place. Her mind was still foggy with sleep when she did so; he made an offhand comment about how he could make sure she eats first before collapsing into her bed.

“Come, then, eat with me inside,” she offered with a yawn and a stretch. She only realised it some thirty-seconds later.

Having him in the elevator up to _her place_ is nerve-wracking, but Riza finds herself feeling far too tired to really grasp the nervousness. Roy seems somewhat at ease and decidedly casual, too, even pressing the tenth floor button before she told him to. He insisted to help carry her many clothesbags, an incredibly unnecessary thing, but Riza is thankful at the same time.

“Here, wash your hands first,” she beckons him to the kitchen sink after he puts her belongings down next to her tiny dining table. “Sorry if it’s cramped. I’ve spent way too long living in a big house and I hate it. Cleaning up was always a nightmare.”

He’s had dinners at her house, back then, when he was a resident and he’d come to work on his thesis and a ton of other researches with her father. They used to eat in silence in her house’s large dining room, on the humongous classic-style dining table that only saw use when Roy, or her father’s other guests, came by. “It’s cosy,” he says, taking a seat in front of her, “you know, I used to think you must be pretty lonely in that big house too. Sorry I didn’t help you out.”

It’s not like he could’ve done anything, she thinks perplexedly.

In retrospect maybe it’s precisely because of their history (if it can even be called that?) that eating dinner together at her table like this feels overwhelmingly normal. The only difference is that compared to back then, the physical space between them is much smaller; even then, when the distance between them is much farther than her wide dining table, Roy’s always been good at making her engage in casual, comfortable conversations over their meal.

He asks her about Miles, and she tells him that Miles got infected right at the same time with Havoc. There was a motorbike crash patient with multiple fractures, and the two were the anesthesiologist and orthopaedic surgeon who did the emergency operation on the patient. And it turned out the patient had Covid, though asymptomatic.

“He’s fine, fever’s already gone after two days. He last said his sense of smell’s returned, too,” Riza says after swallowing her sandwich, “he’s the only one with symptoms, the nurse who assisted the operation and Havoc all are without.”

“Havoc has _not_ stopped bitching to me,” he grouses. “Like I _care_.”

“That’s just mean,” she lightly says, “both Jean _and_ Becks have not stopped bitching to _me_.”

Roy fixes her an exaggerated pitying state, and Riza rolls her eyes. “My deepest condolences,” he says sadly, and Riza smiles. “Is Rebecca okay?”

“Yeah, she’s negative. Becks threatened to dump him if he keeps that whining up, though,” she lightly says, “he’s been driving her mad.”

“Like that’ll ever happen,” Roy scoffs, and Riza nods absently in agreement. Havoc and Rebecca may seem turbulent as ever to outsiders but they’re pretty much a sealed deal. “If she does, maybe he’ll finally shut the hell up. The things I know about Catalina from his TMIs—she would probably burn me if she finds out.”

Riza narrows her eyes and dangerously points her bamboo straw at him. “Not if I do it first. Careful, Mustang, that’s my best friend,” she threatens, and Roy raises the hand not holding his sandwich up in surrender, “and now _you’re_ sounding like Havoc pre-Becca.”

“Hey!”

“Just because you’re single and broken up doesn’t mean everyone have to be.”

She said it in a joking way, keeping up with the bantering charade, but she freezes when Roy grows quiet instead of retorting back. _Shit_ , she thinks, _shit, shit, way to put your foot in your mouth, Riza_.

He finishes eating his sandwich (always a fast eater, she absently thinks), and fixes her with a weird stare. “I broke up with who?”

Riza struggles to remain casual and focuses on the task at hand—eating the rest of her sandwich that now tastes like _paper—_ and shrugs. “Okay, sorry, I promise I don’t gossip about you intentionally, but _Havoc_ ,” she says (they’ve been throwing the man under the bus enough this whole conversation), “mentioned in passing you seem to have broken up with your model girlfriend a couple months ago? Before the pandemic?”

 _Vanessa_ , she refrains from saying, because she doesn’t want to sound too, well, too familiar with his love life. Vanessa, the jaw-droppingly _hot_ brunette that came a couple of times to the hospital, dropping off things that could only mean they live together; Roy’s laptop, Roy’s spare clothes, Roy’s stray documents. Annoyingly, she seemed to only know how to get to the ICU instead of going straight a little more and then left to the OT and then to his department, so there were instances when the gorgeous brunette had left those various things to _her._

In all reality, though she’d die before admitting it, she had been inappropriately gleeful a couple months back when Havoc told her the two probably broke up; she’d spent the last year wallowing a bit though Riza had pretty much resigned to her sad, unrequited fate.

“You mean Vanessa?” Roy asks anyways, brows furrowing. She nods, chewing a bit too slowly. “Hawkeye, she’s my foster sister.”

And with that, the traitorous bread dislodged itself to her pharynx.

She erupts into a fit of choking coughs and Roy raises abruptly, sending her cheap dining chair sliding backwards as he leans across her small table. “Shit, Riza, chew slowly, are you okay?!”

Riza glares at him after she finishes hacking her lungs out. _What the—what—?_ “If you try to Heimlich me _I_ _will kill you,_ ” she hoarsely breathes as she reaches for her drink.

“That hardly seems like equivalent exchange for potentially saving your life,” Roy says dryly, sitting back though maintaining a cautious eye on her. Riza feels everything, her throat, _her face_ , burns. “You’re violent tonight.”

“She’s your what?” Riza asks again, ignoring his comment, when she’s calmed down (her stupid heart begs to differ).

“Sister. Foster sister,” Roy says smoothly, a small smirk forming on his lips. She uses to secretly find it extremely charming and devastatingly handsome but _not_ at her expense. It turns into a small frown, though. “I think I told you once, when I was still in residency, my mother took in foster kids. I got five foster siblings, Van included.”

Maybe he had. It’s kind of fuzzy. “Right,” she nonsensically says. _But I didn’t know it’s Vanessa,_ goes unsaid.

“And I told you Vanessa’s my foster sister,” he answers anyways because either he’s fucking _psychic_ or because all her stupidity and questions and wonder and stupid _pining_ is probably splayed all across her face like paragraphs in an open book right now. “You, uh, asked, when I drove you home. Havoc’s birthday? You were really out of it. I never told Havoc because, he’s, uh, you know how it’s easier to say yes to shut him up, sometimes.”

He looks a little self-conscious saying that, but Riza is preoccupied with how humiliating it is that her track record of being driven home by Roy Mustang both included her being absolutely passed out. “Oh.” A pause. Fuck it. “What—what’d I ask? Key point being I was out of it.”

(She’s Riza Hawkeye, alright, she cannot _not_ be a smartass and stubborn, even if she’s a hair’s breadth away from confessing her hearts out to the man she’s been crushing on-and-off since she was a medical student.)

“Touché,” he smiles, kind and no longer teasing and very, very unfair. “You asked if my girlfriend, Vanessa, would be alright with me driving you home. I told you she’s my sister.”

There’s a slightly unnerving silence that befalls them, and Riza clears her throat. “Your sister is very, very gorgeous.”

“She is,” Roy says in amusement, “she’s my mother’s pride and joy.”

“Sorry I assumed,” Riza feebly says, busying herself with gathering the remnants of her meal and his, “I mean. Can you blame us? She’s really pretty. And, well, you look nothing alike, and probably not a lot of people know that you have foster siblings—“

“Riza.”

He’s last called her Riza so long ago, when he was someone only somewhat familiar, a sight she welcomes in her too-empty family home. He’s much more familiar, much closer, after they both became colleagues, but for some reason, she became _Hawkeye_ and him _Mustang_. The juxtaposition has always been odd. The cease of it is even stranger. “Yes?”

“Riza,” he repeats, as if testing her name on his tongue. He’s leaning on the table, weight on his elbows, forearms crossed and it feels like when she was young and he was her father’s brilliant resident that she undoubtedly _could not_ have a crush on, only now the table, her table, is much smaller. “Tell me. Do you like me?”

Her innate sarcasm is already at the tip of her tongue— _duh? Of course? Are you stupid?_ —but it doesn’t come out. She can distantly hear the sound of her own heart. This man, this man knows how to work with hearts; most of all hers.

“Do you?” She asks him back quietly. She thinks she knows the answer, though. She knows it’s not teasing on his eyes—it’s hopefulness, and it’s on her own.

“Am I not obvious enough?” Roy says with a wistful smile. “I always have. It’s been years—I thought everyone in the hospital must’ve known by now. Why did you think Vanessa used to drop my things to you? She did it on purpose.”

Riza sits back, pushing away from the table. His face up close is incredibly dizzying. His words are worse. She reels in, for a moment, everything that she might have missed. “It’s been—what?” She asks, and Roy only grins. “Am _I_ not obvious enough?”

Roy scratches his head, then, and his grin falters. “Not very,” he says dryly, and Riza stares, incredulous. “Unlike me, _you_ have had boyfriends, like, factual ones. Not rumoured ones.”

“Only _twice_ ,” she says defensively as she stands up to throw the waste, but Roy stands up too, taking short three steps to take it from her hands and dump them in her bin.

“Still,” he says, shooting her a look before dumping them all. Her bin closes with a soft thud. Riza watches his back in some sort of an awe until he turns back to her as he leans on her counter. “So, no, I’d say, not very. It’s only until recently I finally feel like I have a shot.”

She gapes. _Finally have a shot_? Her brain is running a mile per minute, and her heart two. “You’ve _always_ had a shot,” she blurts out. Ridiculous. “I—“

“Riza,” he tells her, smiling brilliantly. She’s going to _burst_. “Come here?”

He opens his arms and she almost embarrassingly staggers forward but he meets her halfway, and _oh my fucking god_ , she thinks, almost disbelievingly, as he puts his arms around her and envelops her in a warm hug. He smells like the faint mixture of his cinnamon-y cologne and the scent of their hospital’s laundry detergent, and it’s so comfortable and so him that Riza wants to drown there forever. In hindsight, maybe she has.

“I’m glad we cleared that up,” he says; she feels the mumble on top of her head. The good thing about this pandemic is that they’re all forced to bathe at least three or four times a day, and though she hasn’t gone home for days she has no worries of her personal hygiene whatsoever. “Right?”

“Shut up,” she mumbles to his chest, resisting the way he gently tugs her off of him to look at his face. “You’re so goddamn stupid.”

“You sound like Liv, but I could say the same about you,” he retorts childishly, but it’s very, very fond. She makes a sound of assent, a half-laugh—she feels his chuckle reverberate through his chest, and revels at it. He relents, and lets her cling to him; running his hand soothingly through her hair, down her back. She supposes Rebecca does have a point, calling her an idiot when it comes to him.

She only pulls away when she’s somewhat sated from the hug. “Have you been pining over me all this time, Hawkeye?” He asks with a silly grin on his face, and she wants nothing more than to kiss it off of it.

She does. She intends it to be short; _shut up,_ but he has other ideas, and for some glorious, long minutes she’s in her kitchen kissing Roy _fucking_ Mustang, a very unglamorous idea of the pathogenesis of viral transmission via _this_ exactly swimming at the back of her mind. ( _She’s_ been tested, but has he? The most annoying thing of being a physician is the automatic, involuntary medical-thinking of the most normal and basic thing. But kissing Roy Mustang is the furthest from normal and basic.)

(But you know what, a month-long self-isolation with him might not be too bad.)

He rests his forehead on hers when they’re done, and Riza can’t help her own smile.

“I can hear your tachycardia from here,” he teases, and Riza whacks him on the chest, earning a soft _ow_. “You might need a jolt.”

“I hate you.”

“Took me long enough, huh?” He asks after he’s done chuckling, his voice breathy. “Sorry I’m stupid.”

“Forgiven, if you stay the night,” she says, only hesitating in the last syllable. “If you want to.” Roy grins and nods, though, ducking to kiss her cheek in affirmation.

It’s heady; one minute they’re only teetering on the verge of friends and colleagues and now she’s going to sleep (just sleep, because they’re so very tired and she has absolutely no energy left for other activities than sleeping) with Roy. He tells her to take a shower while he fetches a change of clothes from his car, getting another hit from her as he cheekily taps her butt when she steps away. He’s going to kill her one of these days, Riza’s sure, but she’ll be ready any time.

“You know,” Roy says, after slipping into her bed, not quite wide enough to be a double but just the perfect size for two people to sleep entangled like this, “Liv and Maes always said I was stupid about you.”

“Well they were right,” she says petulantly, though she _knows_ perfectly well she’s equally, if not more, stupid about him. He smells like her vanilla soap and citrus shampoo. He’s very warm with no top on; he only had spare scrubs and a shirt for change.

He hums, letting her burrow herself in his embrace. “When I tell them about us they’d have the time of their life. It’ll be good entertainment for Liv’s isolation,” he says, and Riza chuckles to his chest faintly, eyes already heavy with sleep, “I still wonder where did Liv get infected. She won’t say, she’s not close with Havoc and before you told me I didn’t know Miles is positive. Did she and Miles have an operation after his initial contact?”

Riza reflexively pushes off of him to stare. “Are you serious?” She frowns, incredulous. Roy blinks, confused at her reaction. “Roy, _they’re married_. Of course Liv’s at a huge risk to get infected.”

“They’re what?”

“Roy, Olivier’s Miles’ wife,” she patiently says, “they’ve been married for three years. How do you _not_ know?”

She bites back a smile at his bewildered expression. _Roy_. _Riza_. It’s so silly how happy she feels with the simple shift of them using their first names. But then again, Liv, Maes, Rebecca—they _did_ say the two of them are idiots.

“They’re—god,” he says, pulling her back to his hug after a few moments of stunned silence. “Christ. What a _fucking hypocrite_.”

She laughs, brain shutting down to be able to supply another response. She feels Roy kiss her forehead and tells her goodnight; she faintly feels him shake his head slightly and murmuring _hypocrite_.

Riza drifts off to a very, very nice sleep with a smile.

+

**Author's Note:**

> roy mustang, a total fucking idiot: will you be by my side forever  
> roy: i mean in the operating theatre  
> riza hawkeye, equally stupid and terribly dense: i am pining alone
> 
> also if you need a little context: after specialty it’s optional for medical specialists to take a sub-specialisation. for example after being an anesthesiologist you can be an intensivist/critical care sub-specialist (basically a sub-specialist about intensive & critical care), cardio-thoracic anesthesia, neuroanesthesia, etc. basically u go to school again
> 
> btw stay!! safe!! always!!
> 
> also riza is team bamboo straw and she actually does reuse it ok. roy probably just discards the notion of straws entirely and simply gobble his drinks. this note has gone on for far too long. as was this fic. I intended it to just be roy cursing liv for being a hypocrite. it. snowballed.


End file.
